Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Nicola Searle, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 31 December 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Jani Ihalainen, Nikos Prentoulis and Mark Schweizer.

Birgit Clark is on Sabbatical till the end of the year

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

The author's thesis is that, since the patent system was developed mainly during the industrial revolution to protect material innovations, patent law cannot be applied to "intangible industrial inventions". Software for example is denied patentability due to its lack of materiality. Such a justification for this denial is economic nonsense: international patent law must be adapted to cover the emerging virtual world. This has not been done. Unsuited to modern innovation, international patent law has reached a period of decline.According to Dr Mancini, this decline is due to the fact that despite the existence of international agreements, countries have now come to ignore the framework of the patent system (for software) and sometimes to adopt new international agreements (for semi-conductor chips). This book seeks to explain how this situation has arisen and how and why we should urgently modernize and rebalance the international patent system.

To be honest, this book is more of a medium-sized essay than a book. With small pages, large print and plenty of white space, it could probsbly have been comfortably housed in a regular law journal. The author is a passionate advocate of her position, but the IPKat wonders whether this little book might not be improved by more background research and careful reading, as well as by focusing on the way in which the patent system succeeds in protecting so many software inventions notwithstanding their apparent lack of materiality.

Tibor Gold of Kilburn & Strode (who was involved in the EUROMASTER case, which was originally flagged here and later explained here) adds:

"There is absolutely nothing new in the EUROMASTER case. The marks are identical but tyres and repair services were held to be neither similar nor even complementary to transport services or organising sporting events (car rallies). Different target publics. A completely hopeless appeal, like so many, alas, on which we waste our time ...

Subscribe to the IPKat's posts by email here

Just pop your email address into the box and click 'Subscribe':

Gama and Pal: is the wet-wipe packaging confusingly similar?

Yesterday morning the IPKat posted this item on an ongoing passing-off action, Gama Healthcare Ltd v Pal International Ltd. in which Gama objected that Pal's wet-wipe packaging would lead people to think it was theirs.

When that Katpost went live, there were no examples of the parties’ packaging to show readers. The Kats have since received images of both, which they reproduce below, and they ask readers, through the medium of the sidebar poll below, if they think that Pal's packaging might be mistaken for Gama’s one.

Pal's packs are sold under the Medipal brand and Gama's are sold as Clinell products.

Caveat: this poll is conducted purely for the amusement of readers of this weblog. It is not mandated by the trial judge or commissioned by either party; it is not based on any methodology and it is not intended to have any evidential value at all.

Wet-wipe packaging: do you think you could pick up a packet of Medipal, thinking it was Clinell?

The IPKat's sidebar contents

Want to complain?If you feel that you have been unfairly prevented from posting a comment on one of this weblog's features, here's what you can do about it

The IPKat's cousins: some IP-friendly blogs for youThe IPKat lists his 'family' of IP blogs, some of which focus on specific rights, geographical zones, markets or interests

How many page-views?See how many times the pages of the IPKat weblog have been purr-viewed

The Kat that tweetsToo short to blog? Some news and views are still worth airing, thanks to Twitter

Want to receive the IPKat weblog by email?You can get each post, or a digest, sent direct to your favourite mailbox

Not just any old IPKatEvery so often, this feline creeps into the limelight

The IPKat's RSS feeding arrangementsFeedburner and all those other things ...

What you've been sayingHere are the most recent readers' comments on the IPKat's posts

The IPKat's Greatest Hits!Here are the five posts on the IPKat's weblog that have received the most attention from readers over the past 30 days

Has the Kat got your tongue?Some translation facilities for readers whose first language is not English, or who are just plain masochistic

Creative Commons licenceYou too can make use of this blog's contents, if you follow the rules

The IPKat ArchiveAncient posts, going back to June 2003

Want to complain?

If you have posted a comment to one of our blogposts and it hasn't appeared, it may be because it doesn't match our criteria for moderation -- essentially that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should be relevant to the blogpost on which they purport to comment.

If you feel that your comment should have been moderated, please email the IPKat at theipkat@gmail.com and let him know, since it may be that your comment has been misdirected into the Blogger software's Spam file.

In the event that there has been no software malfunction and that your post has been rejected, if you want to appeal against this decision please contact either (i) Dr Danny Friedmann of theIP Dragonweblog (ipdragon@gmail.com) or (ii) Professor Dennis Crouch of the Patently-O weblog (dcrouch@patentlyo.com). Danny or Dennis will review your complaint, preserving the confidentiality of your identity and will let both you and us know whether your complaint is justified.

If your complaint relates to bias or distortion, the IPKat suggests that you contact him initially, bearing in mind that he and Merpel are generally willing to host pieces by guest contributors even when their opinions are at odds with those of this blog's contributors.